Summary
It is another busy afternoon in Donald Trump’s Washington. We will continue to cover events as they unfold, but here are some of the developments we’ve reported on so far:
Donald Trump told reporters that he is willing to accept Russia’s longstanding objection to Ukraine joining the Nato alliance. “They’ve been saying that for a long time, that Ukraine cannot go into NATO, and I’m okay with that” the president said. He also revealed that he and Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, spoke for more than an hour to begin the process of ending the war in Ukraine and the two men expect to meet in person in Saudi Arabia soon. Trump said he later spoke with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump denied that he was “freezing out” Zelenskyy, but he hinted that the Ukrainian president could be defeated in elections after the war ends.
Tulsi Gabbard was sworn in as Trump’s director of national intelligence.
The trustees of the Kennedy Center have elected Donald Trump as their chairman, the Washington Post reports.
The ACLU and a coalition of immigrant rights organizations has sued the Trump administration for access to undocumented immigrants held at Guantánamo Bay.
The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt hit back at legal scholars concerned that Donald Trump’s efforts to freeze federal spending have sparked a constitutional crisis, saying that the administration is acting lawfully. “The real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges and liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block president Trump’s basic executive authority,” Leavitt said.
Speaking at Nato headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ruled out Nato membership for Ukraine, which the country’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had been pushing for. Hegseth also called the return of Russian-occupied Crimea to Ukraine “unrealistic”.
Three people, including one American, were released from Belarus, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday. The US envoy for hostages, Adam Boehler, told reporters at the White House that the individual wishes to remain private.
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Updated at 17.51 EST
Key events
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Chrystia Freeland, who is running to be Canada’s next prime minister, and has stressed her willingness to stand up to Donald Trump’s threats to her country’s sovereignty, called for Nato to make Ukraine a full member.
Freeland’s statement, made on the social media platform X in three languages, English, French and Ukrainian, came the same day that Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, essentially ruled out Nato membership for Ukraine. Trump told reporters that he “is OK with” Russia’s demand that Ukraine should be kept out of the allience.
“Canada stands steadfast with Ukraine and the brave people of Ukraine who are on the front lines of the fight against tyranny” Freeland wrote. “It is in the interest of all democracies to support them. Ukraine must become a full NATO member”.
Freeland, whose maternal grandparents were born in Ukraine is also an expert on Russia. Before entering Canadian politics, and rising to deputy prime minister, she was a journalist who served as Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times in the 1990s. In 2000, she wrote a book about Russia’s chaotic transformation from communism to capitalism, Sale of a Century: the inside story of the second Russian revolution.
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Updated at 18.25 EST
Judge lifts block on Trump ‘buyout’ program for federal workers
The Trump administration had a rare victory in court on Wednesday, as a federal judge in Boston ruled that the “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation program, can resume.
US District Judge George O’Toole, who was nominated by the president Bill Clinton in 1995, rejected a request by unions representing more than 800,000 federal employees for an order blocking implementation of the program.
The unions have called the administration’s offer to federal civilian employees unlawful, but the judge ruled that the unions lacked standing to sue and his court didn’t have jurisdiction over the dispute.
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Updated at 18.06 EST
Summary
It is another busy afternoon in Donald Trump’s Washington. We will continue to cover events as they unfold, but here are some of the developments we’ve reported on so far:
Donald Trump told reporters that he is willing to accept Russia’s longstanding objection to Ukraine joining the Nato alliance. “They’ve been saying that for a long time, that Ukraine cannot go into NATO, and I’m okay with that” the president said. He also revealed that he and Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, spoke for more than an hour to begin the process of ending the war in Ukraine and the two men expect to meet in person in Saudi Arabia soon. Trump said he later spoke with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump denied that he was “freezing out” Zelenskyy, but he hinted that the Ukrainian president could be defeated in elections after the war ends.
Tulsi Gabbard was sworn in as Trump’s director of national intelligence.
The trustees of the Kennedy Center have elected Donald Trump as their chairman, the Washington Post reports.
The ACLU and a coalition of immigrant rights organizations has sued the Trump administration for access to undocumented immigrants held at Guantánamo Bay.
The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt hit back at legal scholars concerned that Donald Trump’s efforts to freeze federal spending have sparked a constitutional crisis, saying that the administration is acting lawfully. “The real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges and liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block president Trump’s basic executive authority,” Leavitt said.
Speaking at Nato headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ruled out Nato membership for Ukraine, which the country’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had been pushing for. Hegseth also called the return of Russian-occupied Crimea to Ukraine “unrealistic”.
Three people, including one American, were released from Belarus, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday. The US envoy for hostages, Adam Boehler, told reporters at the White House that the individual wishes to remain private.
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Updated at 17.51 EST
Donald Trump told reporters that he plans to have a news conference on Thursday devoted to what he says are examples of “tremendous fraud” in government spending.
Pressed as to when the White House would be providing real evidence of fraud, Trump said: “What we’re going to do is, tomorrow I’m having a news conference. I’m going to read to you some of the names that hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars have been given to”.
“When you look at the kind of money, billions and billions of dollars being thrown away, illegally,” Trump said, “there’s no chance, I’m going to say it in front of our our attorney general, there’s no chance that there’s not kickbacks or something going on.”
We will see what examples Trump comes up with on Thursday, but so far, several of the examples cited by the president and Elon Musk of supposed waste, fraud or abuse, have been either misleading or entirely fictional.
Given that extending the tax cuts for wealthy Americans he passed in his first term is a priority for Trump’s second term, the all-out effort to deride government spending as wasteful or fraudulent serves an obvious political purpose.
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Updated at 17.59 EST
Trump suggests Zelenskyy might not be president of Ukraine for long
Asked by a reporter if, by discussing an end to the war in Ukraine directly with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, he was “freezing out president Zelenskyy in this process. Isn’t there danger of that?” Donald Trump hinted that Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s days as president of Ukraine might be numbered.
“No, I don’t think so – as long as he’s there. But, yeah, at some point, you’re gonna have to have elections too” in Ukraine.
Removing Zelenskyy from power has long been a primary goal for Putin.
For Trump’s part, he is unlikely to have forgotten that he was impeached in 2019 over his failed effort to coerce Zelenskyy into opening a bogus investigation of his rival Joe Biden, and into the conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in the 2016 presidential election. Since that time, Russian propaganda smearing Zelenskyy with false claims of hidden corruption have been eagerly shared by diehard Trump supporters.
Following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Zelenskyy hired the Ukrainian investigative journalist Sergii Leshchenko to debunk Russian propaganda on social media. In August of 2016, it was Leshchenko who publicized a ledger of secret payments to Paul Manafort from the party of Ukraine’s former pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych’s former political adviser. The revelation forced Manafort to resign from Trump’s presidential campaign the next day.
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Updated at 17.15 EST
Trump says he is ‘okay with’ Russian demand to keep Ukraine out of NATO
Asked if he is opposed to NATO membership for Ukraine, Trump said that he is willing to accept Russia’s longstanding objection to Ukraine joining the alliance.
“I don’t think it’s practical to have it, personally” Trump said of Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership. “I know that our new Secretary of Defense, who is excellent, made a statement today saying that he thinks it’s unlikely or impractical. I think probably that’s true. I think long before President Putin, they said there’s no way they’d allow that. This has been going on for many, many years. They’ve been saying that for a long time, that Ukraine cannot go into NATO, and I’m okay with that”.
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Trump says he will meet Putin, ‘probably in Saudi Arabia’ to talk about ending war in Ukraine
Speaking to reporters in the Oval office after Tulsi Gabbard’s swearing in as his intelligence director, Donald Trump said that he had “a great call” with President Vladimir Putin of Russia that lasted for “over an hour this morning” on the subject of ending the war in Ukraine. “I also had a call with President Zelensky, a very good call after that, and I think we’re on the way to getting peace”.
After again claiming that as many as 1.5 million soldiers had been killed in the war, a vastly larger number than either nation, or independent experts estimate, Trump said that a meeting between his Vice President, JD Vance and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky this week at the Munich Security Conference would be part of the peace talks.
“I’ll be dealing with President Putin, largely on the phone, and we ultimately expect to meet. In fact, we expect that he’ll come here, and I’ll go there, and we’re going to meet also, probably in Saudi Arabia. The first time we’ll meet in Saudi Arabia, to see if we get something done”.
Trump suggested that the meeting would be arranged by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The Saudi crown prince and the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev, were involved in negotiations for the release of American teacher Marc Fogel from a Russian prison, a source close to the negotiations between Russia and the United States told Reuters earlier on Wednesday.
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Trump says he wants to close the Department of Education ‘right away’, reports say
Donald Trump was just asked during the Oval Office ceremony to swear in Tulsi Gabbard how soon he would like the Department of Education to be closed.
Jennifer Jacobs of CBS News reports on X that he replied: ‘right away’.
“It’s a con job” the president said.
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Updated at 18.00 EST
Tulsi Gabbard vows to ‘refocus intelligence community’
Moments after being sworn in as director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard promises “to refocus our intelligence community” in remarks in the Oval Office.
Here is some of what Gabbard said to the pool reporters allowed into the room, as Trump and Bondi looked on:
Unfortunately, the American people have very little trust in the intelligence community, largely because they’ve seen the weaponization and politicization of an entity that is supposed to be purely focused on ensuring our national security.
So I look forward to being able to help fulfill that mandate that the American people delivered to you very clearly in this election to refocus our intelligence community by empowering the great patriots who have chosen to serve our country in this way and focus on ensuring the safety, security and freedom of the American people.
As you said, Mr President, this is what I’ve dedicated my life to, and it is truly humbling to be in this position to serve in your administration help to rebuild that trust and ultimately to keep the American people safe.
Last thing I’ll mention is that in your national prayer breakfast speech, you made a statement about your legacy of wanting to be remembered as a peacemaker. I know that I can speak for many of my fellow service members who are here today, veterans, Medal of Honor recipients, how deeply that resonates with us.
For those who volunteer to put their lives on the line when duty calls, but to have a president, commander in chief who recognizes the cost of that sacrifice and ensuring that war is the last resort, not the first. So thank you for your leadership. On behalf of my friends here and all who wear the uniform, we’re grateful.
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Updated at 18.01 EST
Tulsi Gabbard sworn in as national intelligence director
Tulsi Gabbard has been sworn in as Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, in an Oval Office ceremony attended by the president.
Attorney general Pam Bondi administered the oath.
Trump spoke briefly about Gabbard, calling her “an American of extraordinary courage and patriotism”. He’s scheduled to sign unspecified executive orders in a few minutes.
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Kennedy Center trustees elect Trump chairman – report
The trustees of the Kennedy Center have elected Donald Trump as their chairman, the Washington Post reports, after the president made the unusual announcement that he would like to oversee the Washington DC performing arts venue.
The president had earlier this week named Ric Grenell, a diplomat and longtime associate, as the center’s interim executive director, a decision that raised fears of politicization at the venue. The Post reports that the center’s current president Deborah Rutter told staff she was stepping down, and that Trump had also ordered the firing of all of Joe Biden’s appointees to the center’s board. Here’s more on Trump’s foray into the performing arts:
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Updated at 18.02 EST
Immigrant rights groups sue for access to detainees at Guantánamo Bay
A coalition of immigrant rights organizations has sued the Trump administration for access to undocumented immigrants held at Guantánamo Bay.
The group, which includes the American Civil Liberties Union and its Washington DC affiliate along with the Center for Constitutional Rights and International Refugee Assistance Project, sued on behalf of several detainees brought to the US military base under a new Trump administration policy, as well as multiple legal service providers seeking to access people held there. Also among the plaintiffs is a family member of a man detained at Guantánamo.
“The Trump administration cannot be allowed to build upon Guantánamo’s sordid past with these latest cruel, secretive, and illegal maneuvers. Our constitution does not allow the government to hold people incommunicado, without any ability to speak to counsel or the outside world,” said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Prison Project.
Here’s more about the Trump administration’s decision to send migrants to the base in Cuba:
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White House says no ‘constitutional crisis’, condemns ‘judicial activists’ who rule against administration
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt hit back at legal scholars concerned that Donald Trump’s government-transforming executive orders have sparked a constitutional crisis, saying that the administration is acting lawfully.
“The real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges and liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block president Trump’s basic executive authority,” Leavitt said at her press briefing earlier today. She then attacked federal judges who have disrupted the administration’s policies:
We believe these judges are acting as judicial activists rather than honest arbiters of the law, and they have issued at least 12 injunctions against this administration in the past 14 days, often without citing any evidence or grounds for their lawsuits. This is part of a larger concerted effort by Democrat activists and nothing more than the continuation of the weaponization of justice by president Trump.
Meanwhile, the Democratic state attorneys general who have led much of the legal pushback to Trump believe they are fighting a “dictatorship”. Here’s more on that:
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The chaotic effects of Donald Trump’s drive to dismantle USAid continue to be uncovered, with Reuters reporting that 17 labs in 13 states have had to halt farm research as the agency unraveled.
That could set back efforts to stay on top of emerging threats to agriculture in the United States, researchers who spoke to Reuters said. Here’s more:
The lab closures are another hit to U.S. agriculture from President Donald Trump’s overhaul of the federal government, by blocking research work designed to advance seed and equipment technology and develop markets abroad for U.S. commodities. Farmers have already seen disruptions to government food purchases for aid, and to agricultural grant and loan programs.
Land-grant universities were founded on land given to states by the federal government.
“For U.S. farmers, this is not good,” said Peter Goldsmith, who leads the University of Illinois’ Soybean Innovation Lab, one of the affected labs.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The network of 17 laboratories was funded by USAID through a program called Feed the Future Innovation Labs, and pursued research in partnership with countries such as Malawi, Tanzania, Bangladesh, and Rwanda, the lab directors said.
Their research helps U.S. farmers because programs conducted overseas can develop production practices that may be useful in the U.S. or provide advance warning of pests, directors said.
“It really reduces our capacity to help farmers fight pests and diseases and help American farmers prevent incursions,” said David Hughes, director of the USAID Innovation Lab on Current and Emerging Threats to Crops at Penn State University.
One study that has been halted was working to control a viral disease spread by an aphid that was hurting banana crops in Tanzania, Hughes said.
David Tschirley, who runs an agency-funded lab at Michigan State University and is chair of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab Council, which represents the lab network, said about 300 people are employed by the labs, and they have as many as 4,000 collaborators abroad.
“It presents an American face to the world that is a very appreciated face,” he said, adding that such work benefits national security.
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Hegseth rules out Nato membership for Ukraine
Speaking at Nato headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ruled out Nato membership for Ukraine, which the country’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had been pushing for.
“We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine,” Hegseth said, adding that the expectation Ukraine’s borders could revert to their 2014 status before the annexation of Crimea is “unrealistic.”
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Updated at 14.41 EST
White House says an American being released from Belarus
Three people, including one American, are being released from Belarus, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday. The US envoy for hostages, Adam Boehler, told reporters at the White House that the individual wishes to remain private.
The news comes shortly after American schoolteacher Marc Fogel was released by Russia after being imprisoned since 2021. Fogel was arrested in Moscow after Russian authorities found less than an ounce of marijuana in his luggage.
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Updated at 14.39 EST
The White House said on Wednesday that it was not aware of any preconditions for US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit each other’s countries.
“Not that I’m aware of. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said, when asked at a press briefing if there were conditions for Trump’s and Putin’s visits.
“I was just talking with the president and our national security team, I wasn’t made aware of any conditions,” she added.
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Updated at 14.39 EST
Gloria Oladipo
The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, was heckled during a visit to a US military installation in Germany as military families protested against the Trump administration’s rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
About two dozen adults who live at the military base chanted “DEI” and booed at Hegseth as he arrived to the US European Command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, NBC News reported.
Separately, a group of students attending the Patch middle school, also in Stuttgart, held a walkout, according to a letter from the school obtained by the Washington Post.
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Updated at 14.34 EST
